While saving for retirement can start with a regular monthly contribution, it’s best to build a plan, monitor progress, and refine it over the years. The Retirement Checkpoint pre-retirement tool allows you (or you and your partner) to create a personalized savings plan from now through retirement, and to incorporate and adjust assumptions about investment returns, inflation, Social Security or pension benefits, and more. It provides a “checkpoint” value to help you confirm whether you’re on track to achieve the savings needed by your chosen retirement date. You can try out adjustments to stress-test your plan and graph your projected savings balance and estimated retirement income. Saving for retirement is covered in “What Would Dad Do? Volume 2 - The Middle Years” and Volume 3 - The Later Years.

Requires the Excel, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice application. The spreadsheet-formatted files are provided at the download link emailed after checkout.